eBay’s New Consignment Service Wants to Help You Offload Your Luxury
eBay hasn’t always been synonymous with luxury. But the e-tailer is working to change that, and its new offering might just do the trick.
You can now sell new or pre-owned high-end apparel via the website’s in-house consignment service. eBay launched a similar program at the end of last year for handbags, and it’s now expanding its offering to cover clothes from brands such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Prada.
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By partnering with a leading consignment retailer, eBay has made selling your luxury clothes easier than ever. After filling out an intake form, you’re given a prepaid and insured shipping label so that you can send out your shirt, jacket, pants, what have you. The website then works with Linda’s Stuff to photograph, price, and list the item on eBay. Once it sells, you get a cut of the final price: Items that sell for $5,000 or more result in an 80 percent commission; $1,000 to $4,999 gets 75 percent; and so on.
The list of brands that eBay rolled out on Monday is impressive: Along with the aforementioned labels, you’ll be able to offload apparel from Aimé Leon Dore, Balenciaga, Comme des Garçons, Dior, Off-White, and dozens of other top-shelf names. Since the program launched in September, best-sellers have included Chanel, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Prada, and Salvatore Ferragamo.
Feeling a little bit strange about rehoming your luxury pieces via eBay? The company’s results since launching its consignment service should ease some fears. A number of sellers have seen stronger final sales prices than similar items listed in the more traditional manner. For example, a Chanel 19 flap bag that sold via consignment in December exceeded the average sales price of all other similar bags by more than 45 percent. And several Hermès handbags have sold for five-figure prices, with the most expensive being a $32,999 Kelly II.
If you may be considering paring down your closet and selling through eBay, a few labels in particular have been doing quite well on the site: Globally, the apparel brands with the highest average sales price growth from 2019 to 2023 were Balenciaga, BAPE, Fendi, Gucci, and Vetements.
Seems companies like the RealReal may be staring down their latest competitor.
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